1. CIMCITY COMMISSION INFORMATION MEMORANDUM
November 2, 2020
ADMINISTRATIVE BRIEF FROM NATALIE FISCHER
HUMAN RESOURCES
Workers’ Compensation
As a self-insured organization, the City of Salina is required by the State of Kansas to carry an
excess coverage policy for workers compensation. It is a condition to the State of Kansas
granting an entity a permit to self-insure. This policy provides protection for our organization and
our fund balances in the event of large claims. The City of Salina has purchased this coverage
from Midwest Employers Casualty Company (MECC) for over 20years. One value-added
service that MECC provides is a benchmarking analysis report that provides a comparison of
how we are doing versus other organizations with similar mixes of jobclassifications. Three
areas compared include:
1)Number of Claims (Frequency)
2)Average Cost Per Claim (Severity)
3)Total Losses
MECC provides both a benchmark comparison (governmental self-insured organizations with
similar job classifications and work scope)and a best practices comparison (20% below
benchmark in both frequency and severity of claims). The Best Practice category includes
performance in the top 10%. Over the past 15years, the City of Salina has recorded a higher
number of claims in comparisonto both the benchmark and the best practice. The gridbelow
looks at the period 5/1/2009-4/30/2019.
The blue dotin the lower right-hand quadrant represents the City of Salina’s comparison in
relation to frequency and severity. While our goal is to reduce our claims and become an
organization considered “best practice”,which would place us in the shaded box,our trend is
not concerningor surprising.Our approach to workplace incidents has been and continues to be
toencourage employees to report incidents to allow us to proactively seek treatment. The result
is that we have a much higher frequency/number of claims, but the overall expense is much
lower. We err on the side of proactive treatment rather than not addressing the incident or injury
until it turns into a larger, more serious issue. We believe this early intervention to be effective
since our trend for claims severity reflects that we outperform both benchmark and best
practice.
Annual Losses2009-2018
City of Salina
The lowest line in the above graph represents Cityof Salina’s claims/losses over the 10 year
period. The City of Salina was 29% lower than those entities deemed “best practice” (middle
black line), and 55% lower than the benchmark entities (top blue line).This has equated to an
average of $79,153 lower annual losses than best practice entities, and $230,496 lower annual
losses than benchmark entities.
Average Cost Per Claim 2009-2018
City of Salina
Our average cost per claim is also well below both benchmark and best practice entities. During
the 10-year period, our average cost per claim was 67% below the benchmark (top blue line),
and 59% below the best practice (middle black line). In the 2012 claims year, we incurred a very
large spike due to a serious accident involving a gunshot wound as well as a few other claims
that were above average in severity for our organization.The trend has resulted in a cost per
claim of$3,068, which is $4,364 below the best practice entities, and $6,253below the
benchmark entities.
Human Resources staff is reviewing data with the intent of creatinginternal reports for
departments on a monthly basis so that the safety and cost of incidents is front of mind. The
direct claims do not impact individual departmentalbudgets since our work comp fund covers
the related fees and expenses. Indirect costs such as modified duty or lost time does impact
departmental budgets and productivity. We are looking for ways to reduce the frequency of
incidents and maintain the low severity of our injuries and incidents in efforts to move us into the
top 10%.
MONDAY’S MEETING
Enclosed are other items on the agenda. If any Commissioner has questions or cannot
attend the meeting, please contact me.